Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Cooper, John (O 2009.4) |
| Interviewee | John Cooper (JC) |
| Interviewer | Ruffles (PR), Michael Buckner (MB) |
| Date | 08/12/2009 |
| Transcriber by | Jane Page |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no. O 2009.4
Interviewee John Cooper (JC)
Date 8.12.2009
Venue 2 Goldings Lane, Waterford
Interviewers Ruffles (PR), Michael Buckner (MB)
Transcriber Jane Page
PR At home. It‟s the 8th December, 2009. I‟m just testing the machine before setting off 3for number 2 Goldings Lane, Waterford, which is the home of John Cooper, and I‟m hoping that Mike Buckner will be there with me to hear John‟s Hertford memories.
PR We‟ll talk to you first, I think, John, because the listeners won‟t be able to see what we‟re looking at.
JC No.
PR So, if we just fill in your background on tape, and then we can have a look at some of these. Do you think, Mike?
MB That sounds very reasonable to me.
PR Are you rolling?
MB Shall I get going now?
PR Oh yes.
JC Are we canning straight away?
PR Yes, yes.
JC We won‟t want those until later on, then. Photographs.
PR No, we‟ll come…
JC Come to this sort of thing afterwards.
PR I think so. Yes. It‟s always a difficult decision, but…
MB So it‟s Tuesday, the eighth of December, two thousand and nine. Present are John Cooper, who is going to be giving us some of his memories, Peter Ruffles and Michael Buckner. John is presently sorting through some photographs he has, before talking to us about his memories.
PR So, John, you are … There are lots of Coopers in Hertford.
JC Yes.
PR Where do you fit in, personally, to the Cooper name, that‟s been in Hertford for a long time?
JC The Cooper name started in Cowbridge, our family. There were seven children. I have a photograph of the old shop, before my time. They started business there, old Cowbridge, as sign writers.
PR Number 13.
JC Number 13, Cowbridge, next door was the old Prince Regent cottages. Do you know about that?
PR Yes.
JC That was next door to us. Previously to my father moving in there to have his works, Cooper Signs, sign writers, it belonged to a motorcycle shop and a cycle shop. I have photographs of them pre and afterwards, and at one stage there was a man with a history there describing how the house fell into the river, but that was before we moved there, but there is a history of it.
PR Yes.
JC I was born there in 1931.
PR They did take the front of that building down, didn‟t they, some years ago, the whole front wall was removed because of a sewer collapse underneath it. Do you remember? That was after your…
JC After we moved away from that. Yes. I went quite recently, and knocked on the door, and spoke to the gentleman there, and said, "I was born in this place and highly interested", and I told him what the place was like when we were there. As I say, my father had his workshops out at the back, and the shop was called "The Tuck Shop", which my mother ran with my eldest sister, Molly. She used to help in there. They sold everything there, from sweets to general knickknacks, and then had a little bit of greengrocery as well, which led to a lot of fun at one stage. There was the Cowbridge School at the back of us.
PR Yes.
JC So, I just had to walk out of the back door to go to school. I remember the names of the head teachers, Miss Bradbeer, Miss Stocks, Mrs Owen and right down to Miss Kittick.
PR Yes.
JC And a little bit of fun was there, when they had the shop, used to sell patent medicines. There was a card in the shop, which had Carter‟s little red liver pills, little red pills. And, one day, I went to school in the morning, and pinched some of these from this thing, and dished them out to the children. It was not long afterwards when there was all chaos. I don‟t think I sat down for a fortnight afterwards. They discovered who had distributed those pills. You can guess what was happening.
PR Yes. Across the yard.
JC Dear, oh dear, oh dear!
PR So, while we‟re still on number 13, mother running the Tuck Shop at the front.
JC Yes.
PR The sign writing, was that happening at the back?
JC At the back, yes. Going into Dimsdale Street. It was quite a part of the workshops there, alongside the river. My father had his workshops.
PR Running up to Ransons.
JC Yes, up to Ransons. And between Ransons and our place there was a place what we called "the dipping", this was a public dipping, where anybody could go and draw water, goes down to the river Beane, and dip water. Now, I was annoyed when I went to see the place not long ago, I said "You‟ve built onto the dipping. Who gave you permission to do that? It was a public dipping". "Oh, I didn‟t know about that", he said. It was a separate alleyway descending down with its own gateway to go down to the dipping. Two or three steps and dip your water out of the river.
PR I was going to say, it‟s quite a drop to the water.
JC It‟s quite a way down and two or three steps down towards the river‟s edge. A public dipping.
PR Yes. There were one or two of them around. There was Dye‟s dipping place at Bircherley Green.
JC Yes.
PR On the Lea, but I didn‟t know there was one…
JC Well, anyway.
PR Oh, well. Ransons were to do with Drivers and Roses?
JC Roses I was coming to. Roses had a printing works on the corner of …, in Hertford, on the corner of … oh crumbs! Bull Plain, I suppose.
PR Yes. Salisbury Square.
JC Salisbury Square now.
PR Where the Oddbins is now, Mike?
MB Yes.
JC And when you went into the fruit shop with the people from Ransons, and when the print machine was working up there, the big machine, the whole building was swaying with the movement of the press. And the Griffithses had a greengrocery underneath, that was Griffithses and Cooks took it over after that, I believe. And Miss Ranson, Miss Ranson, she used to be the caretaker for the Cowbridge School. A dear old lady. There was Sadler, the coal merchant, round Dimsdale Street.
PR Yes. Mike, do you know where we are, roughly?
MB Yes.
PR In case Mike‟s sitting there, bored out of his mind. Mike‟s new to the task, and Mike‟s job is to stop us when we don‟t describe something clearly, because we tend to know.
MB It‟s fascinating.
JC I‟ve got to be careful, and explain it as much as I can.
PR As far as you can, but, sticking with the Ransons just for a moment, before we move further down Dimsdale Street. Two of them died on the same day. Do you remember that?
JC I cannot…
PR Well, I can‟t remember exactly who it was, but I remember (we‟ll come onto the Farnham‟s paper shop)
JC Yes.
PR (the centre of the universe, in a minute) but I remember someone coming in and telling us, I think, that Miss Ranson, the one you‟re referring to, had died, and then later that same day, came in to say, I think, her brother…
JC Bill Driver.
PR Ah.
JC Bill Driver died. Yes he did die. That‟s right.
PR Ah, right.
JC Bill Driver, his name was.
PR Yes, yes.
JC I don‟t know what relationship he was with them actually, but Bill Driver was there.
PR Well, I assumed Mrs Driver, who ran Roses newsagent, had been a Ranson.
JC Yes, I believe so. Yes.
PR I may be wrong, because Zillah Driver, in Bengeo,
JC Bengeo, yes.
PR married very briefly,
JC Married Peter Driver
PR Yes, and she‟s kept, although her marriage was a brief one,
JC It was brief, yes.
PR She‟s kept her name. She‟s now 87 or 88, and got the MBE this year.
JC Ooh.
PR Yes, Zillah, for working with the WRVS.
JC Yes.
PR At the County Hospital and other places. That‟s… So, you‟re on the main front, number 13, into Dimsdale Street, the way the cars today come out.
JC Yes.
PR It used to be two way, didn‟t it?
JC Two ways, yes.
PR Ranson‟s was the next one to you, on the river side, with a lavatory, outside lavatory, by the front door.
JC By the front door, that‟s right, and a little scullery place there, where I used to turn the handle for her when she‟s sharpening and cleaning the knives. She had a big knife machine, and I used to stand and turn the handle for her as she cleaned the knives. Big knives, and she put them in the top of the machine to clean up.
PR And then, beyond the Ransons, actually in the other leg of Dimsdale Street, looking up?
JC That was Sadler, the coal merchant.
PR Who was there then? What did they get up to, the Sadlers?
JC They were coal merchants. He had his lorry down there and he was actually a coal merchant. He had, just next to us, in the house on the corner, he used to park his lorry. He had a Bedford lorry, coal lorry, and it used to back out and the poor old railings of the school sometimes got rather bent. The same happened when my father used to get his cars in the garage, well in his workshops now, often the bumper bars would get caught up in the railings and reversing, not realising what had happened, he pulled the fence with him.
PR So, was Olive Sadler, Miss Olive Sadler?
JC Miss Olive Sadler, they lived up um…
PR Russell Street, or… she finished up in Russell Street.
JC I think Sadlers used to be at the coal merchants at one stage, and I think they moved on from there. My memory… I know Olive Sadler.
PR Yes, she worked there, and linked up with Bridens, the bakers.
JC That‟s right.
PR Olive and her pals. Olive was born in the Greyhound up on…
JC On the corner of…
PR Russell Street. Yes, but I couldn‟t think who would be living in that house at the time that you were young, what Sadlers, Fred or George?
JC Fred Sadler was the coal merchant.
PR Right, right, yes.
JC And Olive Sadler, Olive, I think she was… I think there was a place next door, where she lived. I think she did live there.
PR Yes, 19 or 21, Dimsdale Street.
JC Yes, that‟s it.
PR Ransons were 23, and then you were on the other side. So in your family, brothers and sisters, and that sort of thing, where were you and how did your family?
JC Well, the oldest member of the family was Len, Leonard. He, after he left school, he stared working with my father, sign writing. Then Molly was my sister, the next one down. She used to work with mum in the shop at one stage, and I think she worked at Cook and Drane at one stage.
PR Yes, the grocers in Parliament Square, or probably Castle Street by then.
JC Yes, yes.
PR Castle Street begins. Next to the place that‟s known as Piss Pot Hall, a bit rudely. Yes, so she was there.
JC Molly. Then Cecil, who had instigated East Herts. Electrical, but he worked first of all as a Hoover representative. After he‟d been in the army, as a boy, went in the army, first he was the Hoover representative, and he used to do…In part of my father‟s workshops on Cowbridge, he just started taking in exchange washing machines and then, soon I believe he‟d clean up washing machines, and setting up a little sort of business, and that‟s how East Herts. Electric started, in the shop on Cowbridge. And dad was a comparatively sloppy man to start on part of the workshops at the back, to clean up some of the machines and sort of get the business going.
PR Yes. Who runs it now? Is it Bruce?
JC It‟s Bruce. Bruce, Murray and Melvin. Three of them.
PR There‟s a sister as well, Bruce and Murray‟s sister. I‟ve forgotten her name.
JC Oh.
PR She lived in Manor Close, in Bengeo.
JC That‟s – Manor Close, that‟s…Ah crumbs!
PR On Manor Close, there used to be a square house, I think it was number 3, Manor Close, and a sign on the wall, saying "this is the one hundredth council house built since the war".
JC Is that not where Len lived?
PR Was that Len‟s?
JC Len moved up to there. Len was the first one, I think, who moved up to that estate, soon after it was built.
PR Yes, I‟ve probably muddled them. So Cecil got started in 13, Cowbridge.
JC And Cecil lived next to the Gospel Hall in Hartham Lane. And originally, he was with the Water Board, I believe, had an old bicycle and used to go round doing valves and cistern valves for the Water Board, I think. That was only a little, short period. I remember that. Cecil started, and then he got started in the football pools, I believe, and just expanded himself.
PR So he was at number 4, Hartham Lane.
JC That‟s right.
PR Were you ever living there?
JC Yes, I lived in there after Cecil and Daphne, his wife, they moved out. My father was the superintendent of the Sunday school, and he said to me one day…I‟d just got married to Sheila. Where we lived first of all was on Cowbridge in Biggles‟s house, Captain W. E. Johns‟s place. We put the electricity in there. It cost £25 for the lights and connection to the grid. Captain W.E. Johns, his relations lived in Ware Road. We took those old gas sockets. Mice! You put a mouse trap in and you‟d catch four mice at one go. I‟ve never seen so many in my life. And at the end of the garden there, little tiny garden there, Captain W.E. Johns, he was a photographer, and at the end of the narrow garden was a tremendous heap of photographic plates. Still there ???
PR So that was number 37 or 39 Cowbridge?
JC I think it was 41.
PR Or 41, yes.
JC Next door to Port Vale House.
PR 41 then, yes.
JC We were stepping into trouble. Port Vale House came, I‟m telling you this, Port Vale House came one day "excuse us" she said, "you‟re making a noise". "What noise are we making?" The outside toilet was on a wall, an abutment to Port Vale House, and when we pulled the chain, from all accounts, they had to pull the chains in Port Vale House, so I put a silencer on the cistern.
PR Who was in there at that point, in Vale House?
JC Ashley Webb.
PR Ashley Webb.
JC At one point, Miss Ashley Webb became a film star, I believe.
PR Did she?
JC Yes, a daughter. What happened, I just vaguely remember.
PR So we‟ve done 13 and into Dimsdale Street, and school with Miss Bradbeer and Miss Stocks and Miss Kiddle.
JC She used to cycle from Knebworth, I think, daily.
PR Did she? She lived in a flat at Sele Farm at the end of her days. She obviously moved over. A very upright lady.
JC Oh very upright lady, yes.
PR Sat at the piano, bolt upright. And Miss Stocks?
JC Oh yes. Miss Stocks lived bottom of Port Hill, those houses with…
PR 29.
JC 29, yes Miss Stocks lived there. Miss Bradbeer lived in, I think Miss Bradbeer lived in North Road Avenue, I think.
PR So the school was being used for children of what age when you were there?
JC Up to when we went to senior school. Was that12, 13?
PR Yes, yes, it would be.
JC I remember during the war we were turfed out. A Jewish orphanage came into the area. After that, they had full schooling, and we were shoved into Port Vale School for one week in the mornings for five hours, the next week we were at Hertingfordbury Road School for the afternoons in the next week. So we was mixed up, and didn‟t know whether we were going or coming, half the time, you know. We reckoned the Jewish school just had full schooling the whole lot.
PR So you would have been 10, 11?
JC 12.
PR So who was being taught in Port Vale School? Because those teachers were later in Port Vale, Miss Stocks and Miss Kiddle and Miss Bradbeer.
JC Miss Amos. She was a great dancing teacher. Country dancing specialist, she was. I remember dancing in the playground with her – lovely. And in the grounds as well, dancing in the open air.
PR Yes.
JC And when the war came, and they put a… Port Vale School had its own shelter, and when the sirens went, we used troop down with torches, and sit down and Miss Stocks, or someone, would read us a story.
PR Gosh. Was it lower than ground level?
JC Oh yes, you went down actually into the underground.
PR A bit damp there?
JC Oh, a bit damp, and we carried torches and what have you, and sit down with books, and she would read a story to us.
MB How long would you be down there?
JC Well, like until the U 2 came, you know. We had several…
PR Would that be half an hour or longer?
JC That would be about half an hour or more, until such time as the all clear would sound.
PR So, while you were in Cowbridge School, who was being taught at Port Vale School? Children of the same age or girls only, or…
JC I think they were slightly older age. I can‟t really remember.
PR It‟s a tangle, that. I may have worked out
JC I remember the wood working shop there. He lived in North Road, the woodwork teacher. It was not uncommon for him to throw a piece of wood at you, if you misbehaved yourself.
PR Ah, and where was that, in Cowbridge School?
JC No, that was in Port Vale School.
PR In Port Vale.
JC We used to go there for woodwork classes.
PR So you went there for woodwork.
JC And the first thing you had to do was make a breadboard. I shall never forget it. Everybody made a breadboard, a round breadboard. That was the first thing in woodwork.
PR So we were going down your family. We had got to Cecil, and setting things up with East Herts.
JC We had Jim, brother Jim. He was …where did he start … well Jim, I think, used to work for Henry Cormack, the fish and chip shop, the other end of Dimsdale Street.
PR The way into Dimsdale Street.
JC Into Dimsdale Street.
PR It‟s derelict at the moment, but a large hall house on the front and then two cottages behind. His fish and chip shop was the end cottage, where you went down some steps to the counter, but, if you‟d ordered your fish and chips, you got them through a window.
JC That‟s right. And I, sometimes, as a young lad, sometimes go up there, I would pull the handle, after the potatoes had been washed, pull the handle and put a potato in it upright, the chipping machine dropped it in big bucket underneath, and put them in a great big tub of cold water. I would have a wicked time in the wintertime doing that sort of thing. I used to have to help up there. Then there was old Bill Munt, hairdressers, was on the end.
PR Yes.
JC And in front of that on Cowbridge was Fosters, the fishmonger.
PR Yes, the wet fish.
JC Yes. John Foster was a great friend of mine. We used to play together in the rooms up there. We used to get a wheelbarrow and go down to Donoghues, I think it was, in South Street, the fishmonger.
PR Brewster, South Street.
JC No, Brewster‟s.
PR Donoghues in Railway Street.
JC Brewster‟s there. And Brewster‟s yard they had kit where they made ice. And we used to have to go down with a wheelbarrow and a sack, and they used to bring up this great, big, long slab of ice, break it in half, put it in this wheelbarrow, and John Foster and I used to have to wheel this thing back to Mr. Foster‟s and crack the ice onto a slab in the front of the shop, where the big window went up in the sky and there was the big slab of marble there, with the fish laying on it. We had to go at a certain time to break up this bally ice. All fun! All fun!
PR So would he have sold it, Mr. Brewster, sold the ice to…?
JC Yes Mr. Brewster would sell the ice to fishmongers. I said they used to have to chop this big slab in half, so it fitted the wheelbarrow, and then put a sack on it, because it was dripping wet in the summertime. It was blimin‟ heavy for old John Foster and I.
PR Yes. So, Jim? Started off in Pingy‟s.
JC When the war came, he went in the Merchant Navy, a sailor. I remember once, during the war, he came in, he just wouldn‟t get sobered up – ragged old trousers, hardly anything on the top. He was on a tanker, soaked in the middle ocean, caught a wave and lost everything. I shall never forget Jim coming in. Dad and mum sort of put him right again, and off he went again. And he was still on merchant ships during the war, and then he disappeared off the face of the earth almost. I believe he went to Canada.
PR Oh. Yes.
JC That‟s his life story – Jim. And after Jim was John, me, and after that, my sister, Olive, and my brother, David.
PR And Olive and David, what was their story?
JC Well, sister Olive. Well, she had beautiful, long hair and great, long plaits. I shall never forget, you know, beautiful hair. Olive, I think she went off after school, Old Cross Post Office. She spent her time at Old Cross Post Office.
PR That would be Munnings‟ time?
JC Munnings – that would be Munningses.
PR Was the... Drivers, Freeman – forgotten who was in there. After Munnings someone called Freeman, I think. That may have been something to do with Mrs. Driver. Doesn‟t matter.
JC The Hugmans, the pork butchers there.
PR Oh, yes, yes.
JC Next door there.
PR That‟s the signwriters on Old Cross now. Pork products.
JC Pork butchers, separate pork butchers, and they had one beef butcher was in Railway Street, (is it Railway Street) up by Woolworth‟s, opposite Woolworth‟s there, Stallabrass.
PR Stallabrass, the beef specialist.
JC He was the beef man, and he used to store, Stallabrass used to store cheeses in the cellar, I believe, I think it was Stallabrass, and we used to have to go and turn the Cheddar cheeses over every now and again. I forget who it was, a friend of mine, I think, that was his job, to go and turn the cheeses over. Then going into Maidenhead Street, it‟s all about Hertford; there was Coopers, the ironmongers.
PR Yes. No relation?
JC No relation at all. And then, of course, there was Coopers, the boiler people.
PR Oh, yes.
JC The trouble was, when we were in business, we used to get their letters and bills, and they used to get our letters and bills. I think we did manage to sort them out. John Coopers, you see, it was John Cooper.
PR The same name, yes. Did they evolve into Coopers of Bishop‟s Stortford? Is that the same?
JC No, I don‟t think so.
PR National mail order.
JC Not that I‟m aware.
PR But, I believe there are Coopers connected who have just recently gone into St Nicholas Hall at the back of the hall. I am right, that the Aga…
JC Oh, the Aga, yes, Coopers they‟ve started up now, haven‟t they, Aga. I think they must be the same company.
PR Maidenhead Street, yes. Well, we‟ve gone through the family.
JC I left David.
PR What‟s the order?
JC Len, Molly, Cecil, Jim, John, Olive and David.
PR And David and what about David?
JC David did…what did David do first off? Not long… and he was pipe making, inspector with pipe making people. With the off shore gas, he was something to do with inspecting the welding, I believe, offshore, while they were building that station offshore.
PR Do you have any contact with David?
JC Yes, he writes to us. They live down in … oh …where does David live? He writes to us now and again, at Christmas time, and so on just to say what he‟s done.
PR So, where are we, Mike? Are we, have we made the family…?
MB Yes.
JC I went into the Royal Air Force.
PR Yes.
JC In the flying training school, FTS as a flight mechanic with the test flight, and our Wing Commander was Catseye Cunningham.
MB And where were you based, then?
JC Mmm?
MB Where were you stationed?
JC Sipstone [Sheepscombe??], Gloucestershire, yes, we were training pilots, Oxford and Cambridge, university students to fly with Harvards, with Harvards, noisy old aircraft. I enjoyed it. I almost signed on. I loved the job. I loved it, flight mechanic with the test flight. Wonderful job.
MB Why didn‟t you sign on?
JC Well, coming home, finishing my two years National service, I looked for a job, and I loved what I was doing in the Royal Air Force, and they were tempting me with stripes and Goodness knows what, you know. My record was very, very good. I was a very, very smart airman, and Goodness knows what, and I loved the job. It was aircraft, and I flew in them as a test pilot, I used to have to sign the document to say that aircraft was completely refurbished and then ready to fly again. I was a test pilot, and our usual route was to take off out into the Bristol Channel go out to sea so far, turn round and come back in again, come back into ??? Dock. That was his usual route, and one day, I was in the rear cock pit, no compass or anything in the jolly thing, you know, flying along, and went out to sea, and "Oh, Cooper, take it home" ??? "Take it home". There was a stick in the back in the cockpit, so I shoved it in the control column and locked it in, and my communications were, "Take it home", he said. Well, the Bristol Channel, I hadn‟t got a compass or map I could read, or anything. I thought "Well, Bristol Channel", something like that, you know. I turned round, pulled round, and came up the Bristol Channel, and I thought, "Well, why don‟t I turn right, as it were, there and follow the railway to Swindon". Great West Railway. I just followed the railway line and got into Swindon. I could see Swindon, I could see coming into the airport. So he said, "I‟ll take over, Cooper. How the hell did you get us here?" he said. I said, "We come here by rail." "Wonderful", he said, "The Royal Air Force would be well shot up", he said "River or rail, wonderful", he said. He would let me take off from the harbour, but wouldn‟t let me land.
PR Yes.
JC I remember the first time, I had been flying for some time, it was full throttle, you had to get everything going. The thing used to take off easily, it never let me down, and because the prop., you altered the pitch, and when you landed, you altered the pitch of the prop., if you didn‟t it would dig its nose into…. It was well known during the war, the trainee pilots, they lost so many Harvards, in that way. They changed pitch before they landed, the trainee pilots, and that‟s quite right. You make a mess of the prop. But I was very tempted; I was very tempted to sign on.
PR How did…. Mike will get sick of me mentioning Farnham‟s Newsagents.
JC Well, no, Vince‟s son worked.
PR Farnhams gets into quite a lot of tapes, but how did you….Your life has been around Cowbridge, very intimately. How did you tangle with, get involved with Farnhams?
JC Well, I used to go up there to fetch the paper, then I was a schoolboy, and Harry Farnham wanted a newsboy, and O.K. I got the job, and my first job was Hartham Lane, round The Folly and Bull Plain, and back home again, and that was my usual round. I used to jump over fences instead of going round, naughty boy, and I used to do it in record time, get back and "Oh, John, we‟re a paper boy short today, do you think you could you do another round?" and I‟d scoot off back home, and do another round for Harry Farnham. Then during the war, Bob Farnham, his son, I think he was away in the war, and Harry Farnham said would I go and open the shop up (I was only a young lad) in the mornings. I used to go and undo the shop, because the newspapers used to be standing on the doorstep, to carry them in, go in. I was in the back room, I used to lay up the rails, several rails, for the boys to come in and do their….that was how I started. Then, of course, I had a bit of trouble one day. It was a very, very dark morning, Harry Farnham had a bicycle and the light on it was a, not an oil lamp, it was a …crystals…
PR Carbide.
JC Carbide crystals in the bottom, and the water tank was on the top. All very well, I started off and going along, and a shout "Your light‟s out" policeman. I said "It‟s only just gone out". "I‟ve heard that old story before, hold your lamp son", put it on his hand – it was red hot. He walked off and never said a word. Why I done it, I was so cross and it was still very, very hot. All that water and the lamp had gone out.
PR Old Beaky, yes. But that was quite late on to have a carbide lamp, wasn‟t it?
JC Yes, it was quite late. Truth I suppose they were a job to get hold of in the war. And another instance, I was doing a Sunday morning paper round, up in Bengeo, and I finished the paper round, I was coming up towards St. Leonard‟s church, round the back of St. Leonard‟s church, where I heard this terrible rumbling noise of an aircraft. I looked up and I saw swastika on the side of it, and then I saw bits falling off the bottom of it – petrified – then I realised they were bombs, and I chucked myself behind a gravestone, and the bombs, I believe, fell across the marshes. I shall never forget that, and not long afterwards, I heard dadadadada. That was a Spitfire. I thought you don‟t often see that. A Spitfire chasing it.
PR Yes.
JC I shall never forget that, this funny noise of the old aircraft, and there was this crossing. I looked at it, aaaaah! Then I saw bits falling off of it. Bits, they were bombs. I just chucked myself behind the gravestone.
PR Bombs, yes.
JC But, you know, I took my mum‟s…
PR Yes, so, that‟s very good.
JC Back to the river.
PR Yes.
JC My father built a boat. We had a punt on the river, the river Beane. We used to punt up the river Beane. We used to go right up towards the Sele Roller Mills. The roller mills was originally driven by steam, but then they had a turbine fitted in the river. And the turbines, they make a tremendous screeching noise, you could hear it work. Really there was a big long tunnel, fairly long, underneath there and a terrible screaming noise. For a bit of fun, I used to take my mates up there, and put the wind up them. I used to put the punt underneath there. You couldn‟t get near the turbine, because there was a big shield across. They were screaming their heads off, they used to cry and shout and tell me to get them out, but I knew very well, it was sheer devilment, you know.
PR Yes, yes. So you‟d go along the back of those posh houses
JC Dr Medlock‟s place. We‟d go through Dr. Medlock‟s grounds.
PR Yes, Dr. Medlock had garden both sides of the river.
JC Both sides, yes.
PR You actually went through his garden.
JC The Reverend Evans was on one side up there.
PR Ah, yes, yes.
JC He was a dear old gentleman, used to be very keen on his garden, with his hat on, he used to sit there by the river, with his hat on.
PR Gentleman priest, had no living.
JC No living.
PR He was Mrs Brettle-Jollands‟ brother, Queens Road, and his father was Dr. Tasker Evans, a G.P. in the town, but because he was gentry, he didn‟t have a living, did he, at all? The patients, when he went to visit in the County Hospital, suddenly all the patients in the ward went into a deep sleep as he approached, because he would be a bit of a...you know, doing his job, but a bit of a pain really, so suddenly everybody..
JC Dr. Medlock, we spoke of Dr. Medlock‟s home. I got to know Dr. Medlock and Mrs. Medlock very, very well, very nice people. They had one part of the river fenced off, and they had a swimming pool built within the river, a part of it cleaned out, and a diving board and we used to go up there before we got to know the Medlocks very well, and my father. They used to ask my father to pick the apple trees for them, because they were afraid to go up the trees. My father used to pick the apples for them, and then they said "Well, you may use the swimming pool, John, not until after six o‟clock, when we‟ll be going until six o‟clock, after that I‟ll be changing from there, and you may use the pool with pleasure." I used to love swimming, diving board and that.
PR Mrs. Medlock, the widow of Dr. Medlock, left money to the Civic Society for a fountain.
JC That‟s what I was going to bring it up about.
PR All right.
JC Is that a good time, now or not?
PR Yes, do it now, yes.
JC The Medlocks were very, very, wonderful people, very kind, very, very generous, and they wanted to put some kind of memorial in Hertford. They decided the White Hart pub was there, and had this fountain. I believe the fountain was already installed in London at one stage, and moved from there to there. ????Then I got most annoyed the market stall, Hertford itself is a market on a Saturday, no other market could be held within seven miles of that, and it was on Saturday only. But there is a stall there, that‟s got bigger and bigger and bigger, destroying the look of the Market Place there, and I‟m most upset and annoyed about it. I think it has altered a little bit. It‟s reduced it, but I say that is a market place, and a market stall only once a week, on a Saturday.
PR Yes, yes.
MB The fruit stall.
JC Yes. Sometimes right enough, you could not walk around there because they‟re loading stuff all over the place. And now you‟ve got the fishmonger, closed their shop up and got a van there, and there‟s all the empty shops in Hertford, gets me.
PR Yes, a lot of people…
JC I shouldn‟t moan. Sheila said, "for goodness sake, don‟t say anything to get yourself into trouble, John", but that‟s…
PR Yes. A lot of…
JC They don‟t know, but that‟s my feelings.
PR Oh yes, a topical, a bit of topical information. Do you know where your father and mother came from?
JC My father came from Aston, Aston End. My mother came from Stevenage. My mother‟s mother was the first nurse, what they call midwife, in Stevenage. She was the nurse who used to go delivering the babies and goodness knows what, and my mother was there. And my father was at Aston, a very big family, children in Aston, Aston End. My father was at school, he was very talented at drawing. I heard, this is quite true, that there were seventeen children, I believe, and at school, the schoolmaster was taken with my father‟s work, and when he heard there was no money in the family, they couldn‟t find the money, he offered, and he paid for my father to go to college. I‟ve got my father‟s book here, his collage of his drawings, out of this world. A very, very talented man.
PR Yes.
JC I‟m not just boasting. He was a very, very talented artist. My father was apprenticed with Smith‟s in St. Andrews Street, used to be the paint shop in St Andrews Street very, very many years ago, and old Mr Smith died and dad married my mother, you know, and started up his works on Cowbridge.
PR Oh.
JC That‟s how father started.
PR Yes. Is that about number 32 St. Andrews Street?
JC It‟s right on the corner of the pub on your left-hand side,….
PR Morrells had it.
JC Morrells had it afterwards.
PR Afterwards, yes. There‟s now no evidence of the shop window anymore, it‟s been built as a nicely balanced house. Yes, we must have a look at some of your bits and pieces, but have we mentioned your father‟s name?
JC Cooper.
PR Yes, what was his Christian name?
JC George, George Abraham.
PR Yes, I don‟t know whether you‟ve mentioned it. It‟s a job to remember.
JC G.A.Cooper.
PR Yes.
JC Sign writer. His family, my grandfather out there, I think lived to a hundred years old. He‟d only got one eye. And we used to go over there in his little old garden, he used to keep bees, hives of bees for the honey. And he‟d only got one eye, but he could see more with one eye than I could with two. He used to ask us to go and pick the fruit sometimes, the gooseberries and the bushes. He used to stand there "come along, John, there‟s one down there you‟ve missed". I shall never forget it. He could see more with that one eye….
PR Yes.
JC I believe he was an engineer by trade. I think the family were involved, at one time the family were involved with the ???? and another member of the family, I believe, patented a lot of early window stays, to do with ironmongery and that sort of thing.
Side 2
PR I ask you one, and this might not come in with anything you want to cover.
Your paper round that you remember, that started at Hartham Lane, number 4, and then Folly Island, finished in Bull Plain, probably finished with the Johnsons didn‟t it, number 19.
JC Number 19. Yes.
PR That was, my brother did that round for them in wartime, and I used to do it as a spare, you know, a spare body. In our day, which was a few years after you were doing the main round, although you used to come in and help out when Bob was on holiday.
JC Bob was on holiday, or didn‟t get up.
PR Or didn‟t get up, yes. In our day, we used to collect the money on Saturday morning.
JC I was coming to that.
PR Ah. Not all the rounds did that, but that one we collected for.
JC At one stage, I collected the whole lot on a Saturday morning for all the rounds, for Harry Farnham. And you know, he was a person, he used to go out and take a long time, and come back, and he would have all the money on the counter and the books there, and if there was a penny out, he would stop it out of my wages. Never forget it. "That‟s a penny out" and he would take it out my wages.
PR Yes, well, I mean, he was still like that when I was there.
JC When you were there. I shall never forget that, that almost broke my heart.
PR Yes.
JC I used to go all over Hertford. They were big, big rounds, and a big bag full of money.
PR A leather bag with different compartments.
JC And he shook that.
PR Like a clippie on a bus, and he would tip it up and pull some change forward to give change to people on the door.
JC A stook that man. A little bit more of Hartham Lane in my early days. One day, I went down Hartham Lane, because there were crossing gates on Hartham Lane, which ran over the railway into Hartham.
MB Crossing gates?
JC I used to sit down as a young child. Only thing I was interested in trains, steam trains. I used to sit on one of those gates, and all the drivers got to know me. Lots of times in the school holidays they put me on the footplate. I‟d be on the footplate when they shunted up to the East station, further up, and the other way up to the North station when they were shunting trains, and sit down and watch them shunt and do the sidings of all the different coal trucks coming in there. And one day I used to watch the bloke who used to run along, used to shunt the truck come off, let it go on its own, pulls off to run alongside with a big pole to put the brake on. He used to look at how they run, put the brake lever on and walk alongside. One day he shoved the brake thing right in and it went in the wheel, and he smashed this thing, and I want to know he never smashed the brake. I remember seeing it just smashing this thing and the truck still carrying on.
PR That wasn‟t Bill Lawrence, was it? I think he was there a bit after your day. He was a shunter.
JC It may have been Bill Lawrence. I don‟t know.
PR We recorded Bill years ago, who had been a shunter in the past.
MB How many times a day would there be trains going up and down that stretch of line?
JC I don‟t know, of course the Great North station was open then for passengers. I forget how often it was, but it closed down not long after I was... The Great North station, I was coming on to the Great North station, and down Hartham Lane this crossing gate. One day, I went down there, I think it was maybe on a Saturday morning going towards Hartham, a lot of people there, a very, very old fashioned, open car with oil-lamps hanging on the side of it, tremendous crowds of people, and big cameras, film crews on the top, filming. I stood down there. All ladies dressed up in all their finery, and sitting in this old car, and the gate was open. There was a steam train up the top of the lane, steam coming out of it, and this car went over onto the lane and stopped in the middle of it, and the steam train was coming down the other side. I was horrified, but it was all for a film. I don‟t know what film it was, but I‟ll never, ever forget it.
PR Yes. I mean the answer to your question, Mike, about the frequency of movement, you couldn‟t think of it in the way that you‟d think of a normal station, because it was really a long marshalling yard.
JC A lot of marshalling yards there.
PR Yes, with a line into McMullens, and a line into the coal merchants.
JC Coal merchants.
PR Sadlers and Barbers and….but it was just a link between Hertford East and Hertford North via the original Great Northern station, so there was shunting. They brought stuff down to that point and then sorted it.
JC Distributed all over the place. They had a ??? with a Scammel used to hook up to the different trucks and deliver stuff all round the town.
PR Oh, yes.
JC I was trying to remember the name of the driver, actually. I can‟t remember it now. A big marshalling yard, it was quite a big place, full of trucks.
PR What was it like, what was your impression of the Folly Island community though, that you must have known well from getting your money in?
JC The Folly Island, we used to know as the Folly Island gang, and the Folly Island was a place that you did not really get too much involved in, at that stage. Right or wrong, that‟s the impression we got as youngsters. The Folly Island boys, boy oh boy, you didn‟t muck about too much.
PR Yes, yes. John Rist was there.
JC Rist, the Wheelers were down there.
PR John made a tape some years ago, and gave us that same impression.
JC Yes.
PR Folly Islanders against Gas House Laners. They‟d come along the railway track. You used to knock on doors, and then open them, didn‟t you, on Saturday morning and call in. The front door was just…
JC Undone.
PR Undone. Some would be money on the side.
JC On the side, yes, collect the money.
PR Including the Johnsons in Bull Plain.
JC Bull Plain.
PR And the different smells that came out, of cooking the greens for Saturday lunch, and all that sort of thing. And as you got round on this round, you got hungrier and hungrier. Did you go to Warren House pub. and places like that do you remember?
JC Yes, the old Warren House, yes.
PR He used to give me a shandy every week.
JC Oh, did he, by Jove, better than ever I got, then.
PR Then I went across to Brewsters.
JC Brewsters, yes.
PR Where you‟ve just been talking about. The Fish Trades Gazette. They were a bit of a pain; there were a few magazines that had to go out on a Saturday morning, and came in too late for delivery. They were always a bit of a bind, you know. Sixpence, they used to pay for their Fish Trades Gazette. The lad, the young boy in Brewsters, in those days, is now the elderly barber, John Brewster.
JC John Brewster.
PR They were never very cheerful in Brewsters, but I‟d just had a shandy in the Warren House, so that got the spirits up. I heard you go up and round to other places in that street, but I‟ve got a really good memory of Folly Island.
JC Folly Island, yes.
PR There was a blind lady in Old Hall Street.
JC Old Hall Street.
PR I thought "why does she have Daily Mail when she‟s completely blind?" She‟d open the door, couldn‟t see at all, but apparently her brother lived with her, and he was obviously reading the paper. I can remember waiting, and thinking "oh come on, come on", because we want to get back to the shop, after you‟d knocked on a door along Frampton Street, and, by midday in the summer, facing South, it was really hot, baking hot on those front doors. John
JC Yes.
PR But you were tired because you‟d been going round all the town, and you knew you‟d got to go through that rigmarole with Beaky: tip your bag up, count it all out, check it all through, and pay the debts for all the numbers in the book, and getting towards one o‟clock and they want to close the shop and go home, and I can always remember the heat and thinking what a lovely place to live.
JC Oh, yes.
PR Because, you know, most months of the year, you wouldn‟t want any added warmth, because of the sun coming through the window.
JC Talking about hairdressers though, there was a hairdresser in St. Andrews Street. I only went to him once. It was on the left hand side up in St. Andrews Street. What pub was it opposite, I forget? And you‟d go and sit down in the chair, and you‟d pay first, and he‟d disappear across the road, and he‟d have a half-pint of Guinness, and you‟d certainly waited until he came back again.
PR He‟d go into the Three Tuns.
JC Three Tuns, that‟s it.
PR But he could have done the Bell.
JC The Bell, yes.
PR Or…
JC There‟s the Duncombe Arms there, down the street.
PR What was the other one there? The Queen‟s Head. There was…
JC Oh, the Queen‟s Head, you went down into the Queen‟s Head, didn‟t you?
PR Yes, down the steps. Yes, that barbers was pulled down to make the exit from the car park.
JC I only went there once. I sat there. "That‟ll be sixpence, a shilling", goodness knows what. I sat there. He put the thing round me, and I sat there and he disappeared, and he came back, he goes over the pub, you know…Oh dear, oh dear. What a lovely life.
PR Yes.
JC On Cowbridge I was going to McMullens. I lived on Cowbridge, I used to love to see the greys pulling the drays. The horses, the beautiful horses from McMullens, their lovely, lovely manes, a wonderful sight. And even in the brewery itself, down in Port Vale, they had their own, where the horses were stabled, they had a blacksmith, and wheelwright, the whole set up, wonderful horses, they were. I got to know the blacksmith down there, and when my father used to go down there to put the lettering on the big, old wagons. Years ago there was an old wagon that had been left there, and McMullens came to us, because we were dealing with McMullens at that time, came to us would we get this old vehicle out, rebuild it, put it in nice condition, which we did, and towed up into Hartham Lane, and when the new brewery was built, the roof was opened, and an enormous crane picked up this and put it inside in the brewery, and I believe it is still inside there, I believe so.
PR The man that looked after the horses, used to frighten me. We used to call him Thunder Ball.
JC Thunder Ball. Thunder Ball, he was a ginormous man. I can remember him delivering beer to the Bell and Crown, and he would lift a barrel out himself. I forget how much he could lift. Bill Ball.
PR Bill Ball.
JC Bill Ball, you could hear him a mile off.
PR Yes, huge great voice, that ricocheted off the walls of the houses in Port Vale, as he came towards you with the horses, taking them up.
JC And there‟s one story, that one of the delivery people used to go to Stenvenage, and by all the pubs on the way back, and by the time he got back, he was as drunk as a lord, and the horses would come back, find their own way home.
PR Yes.
JC And talking about in Bull Plain, there was old what was his name, had a business of a horse and cart, and he used to go to Stevenage to take people to Stevenage market, I believe, and there was another one, where they got that drunk that the horse would just bring them all back home.
PR Two other quickies, because things come in your head as you…
JC Well, they do.
PR The Unicorn, pub in Hartham Lane, the building still stands, but it‟s derelict. Do you remember that as a working pub?
JC Oh, yes, yes. Very popular pub, especially when the fairs were in Hertford. They used to be outside, milling around, with beer all over the place at the Unicorn, yes.
PR The Whit Monday fete in particular was its heyday that the fair came, yes.
PR We did a recording the other day with someone whose earliest memories were of being very, very hungry sitting outside that pub, waiting for his parents to come out. He later was taken into care by the N.S.P.C.C., but he talked to us about those early memories, and it was sitting on the steps of the Unicorn waiting for mum and dad, who were, as he said, drunkards. As a lot of working people were. They needed the drink a bit to slake their thirsts in a genuine way, because of the work, but the addiction of the alcohol, for some, took over. The other half thing that I only heard fairly recently, and I wondered whether 4 Hartham Lane was on the same system, was the water for number 6 Hartham Lane was an artesian well.
JC I know what you‟re saying. It was known as the purest water in England, and all McMullen‟s beer was brewed from that water, that spring water, and I lived in 4 Hartham Lane. We was offered the job there, my wife and I, offered the job there to be caretakers for the Gospel Hall, look after that, and I believe we lived rent-free and look after the place. And next door, was the builders, Ekins builders yard, on the corner there, their water was all pumped from the spring water, and I shall never forget being offered a glass of that water when we first moved there, the spring water, and it was absolutely delicious. It sparkled and all the beer was brewed from that water.
PR Yes.
MB Is it still serving?
PR I suppose…
JC I suppose it is. I don‟t know.
MB How would one go about getting a glass of that water these days?
PR Well, you go to number 6 Hartham Lane, and ask for it. It‟s actually Ekins, I don‟t know whether anyone lives there.
JC Yes the caretaker used to live there for Ekins‟s, the builders there.
PR Yes, Mr Jackson.
JC Jackson, that‟s right.
PR And it was his daughter, Wendy.
JC Wendy, yes.
PR Who lives at Sele Farm.
JC Yes.
PR Who‟s about my age or a bit older, somewhere between the two of us.
JC Yes.
PR Who told me about that water, but I didn‟t realise that until quite recently. The Gospel Hall, the actual hall bit is the library wing of the old Cowbridge House that they demolished.
JC Yes, it was the old, that hall, the Gospel Hall, originally, I believe, was the hall from Bengeo. A grand hall from Bengo.
PR Well, it was…
JC It was hired for concerts, I believe. The walls were that thick.
PR They were, yes.
JC Almost a metre thick.
PR Yes, well, I was told that Cowbridge Hall [House] was demolished in order to build the houses 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 Cowbridge, opposite side to you, but they left the library wing of Cowbridge Hall [House] to become the Gospel Hall.
JC Gospel Hall.
PR I don‟t know, it could be.
JC The only memory I have of being told that it was to do with Bengeo Hall as a function room for them, I believe.
PR Yes, yes, and your dad ran the Sunday school there.
JC Yes the village Sunday school. There were forty to fifty people there on a Sunday, at the Sunday school, and dad had a little old van sort of thing, and sometimes go up to Hornsmill and pick the children up and come. And then once a year, we would all go to Walton-on-the-Naze or Frinton. Old Dye‟s coaches, and took nearly all day to get there, you know, Sunday school outings, that sort of thing.
PR So that gave you a grounding that‟s led to you looking after Waterford church in modern times.
JC Yes, that‟s right. Oh, it was a wonderful time, I remember we even had children‟s hour, and there again all the children, the boys, the lot, the place would be full up with children having wonderful times, object lessons they used to give in a Christian sort of way, magic lantern slide shows, the whole lot, wonderful atmosphere. Once a year they had a party and, I think, Loxley Ford used to produce a case of oranges, and we could have an orange each.
PR Loxley Ford?
JC Yes, he was the managing director of Wickhams of Ware.
PR Ah.
JC The railway…
PR Yes, because his son is now…
JC Loxley Ford‟s?
PR Yes, he goes to the Baptist church in Hertford.
JC Yes, he does.
PR He‟s been abroad, I think, a lot, and he‟s returned.
JC Yes, he has. I believe he was an engineer in bridges and goodness knows what. I‟m not sure on that.
PR Christopher.
JC Christopher Ford.
PR Yes.
JC Loxley and Christopher.
PR So where did your father‟s background come from? I mean nowadays, Sunday school teachers, apart from being CRB checked, have got to be trained, haven‟t they, but he wouldn‟t have been trained, would he?
JC He‟d come from a very Christian family. My grandfather was a very Christian man, we used to call and see him, and he lived in Aston, Aston End. Although the people around the cottage had electricity lighting, he didn‟t have, still had his oil lamp, cooked all his meals on a black stove, open stove as it were. And the bible was always there. Whenever you called to see him, he would preach always tell you about the bible. And the joy in his eyes as he explained the bible, it brings tears to my eyes.
PR Yes, yes.
JC So thorough, so lovely. Taking my father, you know, a very Christian childhood, and in our house on Cowbridge, every morning we got up, we had breakfast, after breakfast, we‟d have a chapter from the bible read and prayers, before you left to go to work. That stayed with you, you‟d come up and you‟d have your breakfast and a chapter from the bible. I used to love the bit when somebody begat somebody else. They kept begatting a lot of people. It was all begatting, I didn‟t know what this begatting was, but it was a Christian upbringing, and that was how I got involved at the Gospel Hall. My wife, she came from a Christian family, her grandfather was a rector out Dunmow way. It was a lovely world, brought up properly. You never misbehaved yourself, if you did, you knew about it. You never answered your father back, no way. I think it‟s so sad nowadays, there‟s people, drunks who roll about, don‟t mind this, that and the other. No respect for anybody. We were taught respect for parents and respect for elderly people.
PR Yes. Well, I think we‟ve got a really good, Hertford based…
JC Have you enough or not? I could tell about memories of Hertford, the old cattle market used to be in Fore Street, you knew that.
PR Yes.
JC I used to watch the cattle being driven down from there, down through old Cowbridge to the cattle pens. Do you know about the cattle pens?
PR Right, the cattle market in John‟s day would be behind the Ram?
JC Yes, yes.
PR Where there‟s still an archway and the farmers behind tractors used to just get up there.
JC Just get up there.
PR Yes, no, tell us John.
JC Of course the pub used to do awfully well, and then the farmers would be drinking there and come down into Hertford, come down over Cowbridge, and at the bottom of Cowbridge there was Chambers Street, and then next door to that is, it was called Port Hill actually, there was another side road, which was called the Cattle Pens. The cattle would be driven down under the arches there, and there were different pens, alongside the railway, where they put the cows into different groups, and the cattle trucks would come and pick up. That was the Cattle Pens. It‟s very, very sad to think it turns out there was a big space of ground where the trucks were put in the siding alongside this space there and in harvest time when ????sugar beet was in demand, they came down in lorry loads, and loaded all the trucks there, and Metropolitan sugar beet was there. And there used to be a truck of coal there, and the coal merchant would come and get his own coal from off the truck.
PR You know that route?
MB Oh, yes.
JC You knew that.
MB The Ram must have done very good business then, I suppose.
JC Oh, yes.
PR Still got a lovely Victorian counter, bar, back and front. Just not as, well, it‟s the same one as they were using. Solid oak, I think, and it looks good today.
MB ???
JC Quite a few pubs in Hertford.
PR Yes. Monday was the cattle market day, and poultry market. Poultry was London Road?
JC Yes, up round by the jail, wasn‟t it?
PR Yes, backing onto the jail, go in London Road end. Separate concern, same day. Then it all moved to Caxton Hill, and then European regulations were told…
JC You know of the connection between the jail and Caxton Hill? I‟ve heard, when they first built in Hertford, there was a tunnel, to take the prisoners from the jail to Caxton Hill, but where was the tunnel? How true that was, I don‟t know. They say there was a tunnel. Someone spoke about a tunnel.
PR There is a bit of the condemned cell wall still visible.
JC Still visible.
PR Below, so whether that caused a need to take a prisoner privately… We‟d better have a look at your bits and pieces, because that may spark off something else we want to say.
Discusion about photographs, etc. – difficult to hear.
Explanation of John Cooper archive to be held in museum
JC My life and work at Coopers signs. You know about the Tuck Shop and the works at the back. Guilders, framers, imitation of woods and carvings, coat making, we used to make coats in those days. One day, in the workshop, my father wanted us to grind paint on the grinder, a big ???ing machine. We had a tub of white lead, and my father went out, and he would sometimes set me the job of grinding ochres and umbers, which were rocks more or less, and one day he went outside and left me some things to grind. So, there‟s a knob on top of the grinder, that puts pressure on it for fine or course, and that was a job on fine, so I turned it back, didn‟t I, and he came back and looked at me, "and you can go out", he said, "and regrind that lot, I know what you‟ve done". That wasn‟t good enough for my father.
PR Would he have used the paint or sold the paint?
JC Dad used to make it for people, colours, special colours and things, more related to paint making.
PR Yes.
JC Used to be tubs of pure turpentine come in there, gallons of it, and linseed oils and dryers and things like that. Ah, talk about love. Regimental helmets, sticking the transfers back and front of those. They had to double the dolls??? eyes, you have to paint the dolls eyes on the blooming things, and when they‟re dry stick it on the helmet, and when they‟re dry enough, with water, lift the stuff off, and then after that, a coat of varnish over the top, hundreds of the blooming things. And I spent an age doing this. Wheelwrights of Hertford, Rayments, there was Bill Rayment and Jim Rayment, father and son. They used to live in Port Vale, Molewood Road, used to walk every morning…
PR Molewood Road. They were brothers, weren‟t they?
JC Father and son. There was another brother though, but I…
PR The brother was a bit, not simple, but a bit slow learning. I thought they were two brothers, I don‟t know why.
JC I used to go up there with my father sometimes, school holidays, drive up there, lining the costermonger carts, and putting the, we had to paint all the fruit and vegetables on the side of them. That was at the back of the White Horse pub.
PR What, in Castle Street?
JC In Castle Street. And I went up there some school holidays, I used to wander up there, and got quite friendly with the people, and one day, old Mr Rayment sent me down to get their beverage from the pub, the White Horse, which was two pints of beer, one for Jim and one for his son, and their staple diet was: they had a loaf of bread, which was cut in half and a great chunk of cheese. They had a pint of beer, and a bit of this bread and a bit of cheese carved off, and that was their staple diet. And they sent me down one day to get it, and all of a sudden, he ended up and a half pint of beer. It was the first time I had ever drunk beer in my life. Mr Rayment went down the pub, "drink this, boy, it‟ll do you good", you know, and I drank it, and was pop-eyed. I learnt a lot there, in school holidays. I used to go up there, old Mr Rayment‟s. I remember welding, making rims and tyres, welding and the forge, no oxy-acetylene, welding and the forge. And I used to help with a heavy cast iron thing in the middle of the yard. When you made the wheels, you put the wheel on it, and then rake up the yard I used to have to put all the shavings and when the new rim was built, cover it with paraffin, set fire to the blooming thing, so everything was hot, and then help them lift up the wheel and drop it over the wheel on this thing. There were sparks and smoke, and it went down and they‟d tap it down in the right place, and I used to have to put buckets of water down the side of it, and cool it down. But I made a mistake to start with, I was going to pour it round, "don‟t do that", you‟d break it, you know. You had to gently pour the water round to start cooling it down, and the noise it made as it contracted, squeezed and bangings, you know. I used to help Mr Rayment. He was a lovely person. I learned a lot.
PR I thought they were in Railway Street, near the Lion‟s Heads.
JC No they were in Castle Street. Later on the Ford Motor Company was on one side, as you go up to Pegs Lane, and you turned off into there.
PR One of them came to an unhappy end, didn‟t he, in Molewood Road?
JC Yes. That was very sad. I was very friendly with them, actually, and very friendly with old Mr Rayment and Jim. Old Mr Rayment died, and Jim was still there and then he died.
PR Yes.
JC I know about that.
PR Yes. I do as well, yes.
JC Their solicitors knew I knew the Rayments, and I went down there when he died, to have a look in the house, because I knew where all the documents were in the house. It was funny when we opened all the old envelopes; there were loads of cheques never been undone, never cashed. Wonderful people, very nice people.
PR Yes. They backed onto the river, the open bit of Beane Road.
JC They used to flood. The houses were going down the hill, actually.
PR Ah, yes, yes.
JC They reckoned if you put a penny at the front, it would roll out the back door. The whole thing was sinking.
PR It certainly used to be marsh there. There was another blacksmith at the top of Hartham Lane, wasn‟t there? On Cowbridge, was that McMullen‟s? You came up Hartham Lane.
JC Oh, no, I was coming on to this, this was the tobacconists.
PR Yes, Gay‟s.
JC Yes. They had a section there, they used to shoe horses. I used to stand and watch them shoeing the horses. Setting fire to the horses‟ hooves.
PR Well, that‟s what I remember in Railway Street, I‟m sure it was…
JC In Railway Street there was an old…, by the pub it used to be in Railway Street, on the left hand side, well, there was a wheelwright‟s there, Wilkinsons?
PR Well, I think the Rayments both worked in there at the end, after they must have finished in Castle Street.
JC Well they finished in Castle Street, old Jim Rayment, the son, Jim, he started carrying on, and he used to take in cars??? and that, I remember we had a truck, and sometimes we used to take the stuff down to Jim to do the painting. I remember something in connection with that, if I may mention it; I was driving the truck, delivering some things to Jim, and I had registration plates on the front of the truck that were supposed to be removed, and I forgot to remove them that day. Anyway, I delivered the stuff, and then a very irate person came down from the County Council highways department, wanted to see my father, wanted to see me, and take details. What on earth is it about? You were driving a truck on so and so, with trade plates on, you shouldn‟t have been driving, and doing a job for someone else. I just forgot to take the trade plates off. Anyway, it went to court, happened in the Shire Hall. I shall never forget it. The chap who was prosecuting said the driver, driving a truck, was white haired driver of the truck, and I thought "I was driving the truck" and I had the blackest head of hair, and I never thought driving the truck…. The sergeant policeman there, that I knew quite well, he said "you, know, it‟s wrong really", he said, "you‟re doing a good deed, for goodness‟ sake, why has all this come about? Someone over-officious up County Hall," that‟s what he said. It went on and on, I got fined, I forget how much it was. We got summonsed, dad and me. I got home, I thought, "the driver was a very white-haired driver", hey, why didn‟t I pick that up? I felt like going back afterwards to argue, but I didn‟t. I was black-haired, you know, Jim, poor old Jim‟s got white hair, you know, who was sitting beside me. Doing a good deed for someone, that was another bit of history.
PR History, yes.
JC Poor old Jim, he died, unfortunately.
PR Yes, the way he did.
JC What else have I got down here? Oh yes, a bit of fun. After the war, when petrol was short, and Dad was still doing work, we had a motorbike and sidecar, a box sidecar, and on the sidecar there was a ramp at the back, to lay a ladder on it. One day I went out with him, and I sat in the sidecar. The ladder was there, and my head was through the ladder. Think about it! Driving around, if we‟d hit something, John wouldn‟t have been here.
PR Yes.
JC I remember sitting in that sidecar, my head through the ladder, never thought about it, got to put this ladder somewhere.
PR No. Health and safety hadn‟t come in.
JC Health and safety. Another little bit of history, at Briggens, Lady Alderman?? of Briggens???, she was the Queen‟s lady-in-waiting. We had a job to do for Richard Ginns, was to do a study grained in maple; birds eye maple, a special graining job. I went over „cause I worked with my father doing this birds eye maple, very artistic sort of stuff. The job was finished, and we varnished it up. A day later they phoned up, they said, "can you come back, please?" "Come back, what on earth for?" We went over there, the next day, Lady Alderman popped in "it‟s too new", she said, "what can you do? It was dirty, but you‟ve done it, and it looks too new, what can you do about it? You know, it looks new, there‟s no dust". So, Dad said, "well, we can do it", he said, "the varnish is still tacky enough to accept some dust". So, we had to get some raw umber and gently dust raw umber all round the cornice and round the skirting board. And the door had to look as if there wasn‟t a door in that room and grain it so that it could hide the door. We had to go round all the mouldings, just gently dusting it and making it dirty. "Oh, wonderful" she said. But I‟ll never forget the steward and the butler when they came in for coffee. Well, my father was tea total, but that coffee had got some rare old rum or something. I‟ll never forget dad "cor! Good old Joe". I‟ll never forget, just as if you put whisky in it. I was sent up into London to see how gold leaf was made, Tottenham Court Road, George??? Wiley, and that was very interesting for a day. Gold leaf was beaten, hand beaten, marvellous, by women. Gold leaf, that was lovely. I was sent up to the Brilliant Sign Company in London, for two or three days, to learn how Brilliant Sign Company worked. My father knew Brilliant Sign Company. I spent two or three days in London, studying how Brilliant Signs were done, electrical signs. The first job I done, where something ran out, of course, was Bayford Church, and all the ceilings had to be re-plastered and done, we had to copy what was up on the ceilings in the church. We got dear old Blake, Mr Blake, the photographer?
PR Yes, George.
JC We got him to come up to Bayford Church and he looked up at all the work. "How am I going to copy this? It‟s all right". He got a whacking great big plate camera, about a foot square, or more, put a plate on it with a lid where he wanted it. He laid a glass plate on it, and shut the doors, "I‟ll come back later on". I think he was five, six hours after he said that. He looked up, "I think we‟ll help it on it‟s way", and he got like a tin dustbin lid with a big bulb in it – flash! – wham! "That should be right", put the lens cap back on it. I‟ve never seen pictures so wonderful in all my life. Enabling us to redo all the work on the ceiling
PR That‟s very high, isn‟t it, in Bayford, very tall church.
JC Very high up, we were replacing all that wonderful work. Then we come down to the Folly. Large workshop, developing coach painting, used to do ??? lining work. We started off with the Tizer lorries, Tizer put the Tizer ??? on the early ones.
PR So, you‟d come onto the Folly straight from Cowbridge, had you?
JC Yes.
PR And, for Mike‟s benefit, straight over the bridge from Bull Plain, and then ahead.
JC Ahead was the old iron and brass foundry, Isaac‟s it was. A chance came up for a sale, and dad, I think, knew the Isaacs, one way and another, and bought it then.
End of tape.