Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Smith, Eileen (O2004.9) |
| Interviewee | Eileen Smith (ES) |
| Interviewer | Eve Sangster (ES) |
| Date | 10/06/2004 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2004.9
Interviewee: Eileen Smith (ESm)
Interviewer: Eve Sangster (ES)
Date: 10/06/2004
Venue: 36 Fanshawe Street, Bengeo
Transcriber: Jean Riddell
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
ES: This is Eve Sangster on Monday 10th May 2004, and I’m at 36 Fanshawe Street, the home of Mrs Smith, Eileen Smith. When were you born?
ESm: 1916, 22nd October 1916
ES: And where were you born?
ESm: 87 Port Vale Hertford.
ES: And what was your maiden name?
ESm: Evans.
ES: So how many brothers and sisters did you have?
ESm: 2 more sisters, one died, so there’s one now, she’s 92
ES: A good age. So there were just 3 sisters in the family
ESm: Yes, just the 3 of us, now, as I said, only my sister and myself.
ES: What did your father do?
ESm: Oh Golly, well, I was brought up by my grandmother, and so, although I, on and off would see them, went down and stayed with them and what have you, all my life I was brought up by my grandmother and my uncle.
ES: And where was that?
ESm: In Port Vale
ES: So where did your parents live? When you say 87 Port Vale, was that your grandparents home?
ESm: My gran who had a little shop.
ES: Oh, what was that?
ESm: In Port Vale she had a little shop. It would be like you live out there and this would be the
Shop.
ES: Like the front room. Was it a general store?
ESm: Everything from shirt buttons to cheese and bacon. And her name was Mrs Capel, and I was brought up there right from a child. I was schooled there, so as regards my mother and father – do you want all their life and doom? I did see them go in on and off but I was really all the time right up until my uncle’s death, I looked after my uncle down there. I moved up here in 1957. So all my life I’ve been with my grandmother. ‘Course them days you left school at 14. And she died in her 90th year.
ES: What about your grandfather?
ESm: Well that was my grandmother and my uncle – that was my grandmother’s son.
ES: Yes, yes, but had your grandfather died?
ESm: Yes, that would be that side, that would be my, although she moved. I had got a cutting of her when she moved to Hertford. She’d been a widow for years and so I didn’t know anything further than that
[Transcriber’s note: November 1934 – Mrs Capel of Port Vale, aged 89 and a former dressmaker, recalls for the Mercury many conversations with Countess Cowper and remembers the old Westminster Bridge pre-1855, and the Duke of Wellington’s funeral in 1852]
ES: What was her whole name then, Mrs .....?
ESm: Capel
ES: And what was her first name? [Eileen doesn’t know] So I expect one of the first things you can remember is helping in the shop?
ESm: When I left school at 14 I helped her and stayed with her right through and married from there and had my first and only son there, and I come up here in ’57. I helped her with all the travellers, so those time of day I never went out to work. I’ve never been out all my life. I’ve never earned a pay packet, although I had a wonderful life with them. Then when I was 16 [probably 18] my grandmother died and then I carried on and done all the looking after the house and looked after my uncle.
ES: Did you carry on with the shop?
ESm: Only for a little while and then after that what we done was to let the stock run down and gradually ran out and out and then that room we made into a sitting room, and that’s how it remained.
ES: And what did your uncle do?
ESm: Me uncle was in what they call the coach-builder. He worked for Hales for quite a long time up London Road. After that he had, which is still under the same name, Molewood Garage, where he done all cars and all spraying and painting of cars. He had his own business down there. So I looked after uncle then ‘til he died, he was 70.
ES: And then you lived there on your own?
ESm: I was down there then until ------ uncle was there when I married. War was ’39, I married in 1940, so he was alive then during that time.
ES: So where did you meet your husband?
ESm: Hertford.
ES: So how did that come about, did he come into the shop?
ESm: I knew his grandparents [they] lived in Nelson Street, unbeknown to me at the time, and him, so the people in Nelson Street, young chap there, and I was 19 and I knew the other fellas there, going out and about with a girl friend like you do, with these young chaps there. That’s how that started, nothing to do with the shop. But I’d known his grandfather because he worked at Earl’s, the butchers in Hertford, and then I started out and about with him and I remember one Sunday afternoon going over Beane Road to the station and he said to me, ‘Here comes my grandfather’ and I said, ‘I’ve known him ever since I ....’ and that’s how we got to know one another.
He was my first boyfriend and I was his first girlfriend. So in 1940 I married, in 1942 I had my one and only son and we lived then still, at 87, down there with uncle and I stayed on then, looked after uncle because the war didn’t finish until ’45. And I carried on down there until he died, I said I’d look after him. My husband got exempt from war work from Wickhams, it’s closed now, at Ware. He was on all the rail cars. And he was on the staff there. He worked there until, unfortunately, he died at the age of 64. So he died October 3rd and he would have retired at the end of October after his birthday made him 65. I’ve been up here 64 years I suppose now and I’ve been 24 years on my own.
ES: Have you made a happy life for yourself up here?
ESm: Oh yes. I got on with life, I’m not one of those that, I don’t go along with a lot of people where they, I don’t mind talking about the past but I don’t live in it. You can’t alter it.
ES: Going back to the beginning, where did you go to school?
ESm: Well when I first started there, you come down Byde Street, Balfour Street, Christ Church was there, I married there, I think it was Reverend Laker.
ES: That Laker family moved into West Street.
ESm: He married a girl called Edie Woods
ES: What year were you married?
ESm: ’40. My son was ’42 born. War had been on a year when I married. But coming down there, I think there [was a pub] called the Rising Sun and there were some houses at the side of it. Facing there you went all down steps, a hut, Scout hut, they used it for all sorts of things, and Christ Church was there. Well going down those steps was where I very very first went to Miss Skrimshire.
ES: And was it a private school? [Transcriber’s note: Christ church Infants]
ESm: No, just an ordinary little school. There were gardens all round the side of it. From there I went to Cowbridge where I stayed there until I was 14
ES: Is that the National School behind the Congregational Church [originally a British School, i.e non-conformist]
ESm: Yes, and old Miss Ramsey lived at the bottom house that faces onto the river. Her house looks down into that river and I remember when we went to school in those days there we had to go down to her and bring up all the cocoa which was a halfpenny a cup, and fetch the coffee for Miss Bradbeer. Miss Bradbeer lived just along here when I first come along here. She was headmistress. And I stayed there until I was 14. There were cottages there, still is…
ES: Yes, Dimsdale Street.
ESm: So a lot of that is still there. But in Port Vale you used to hear the train go across the bottom [bridge abutments remain] and that used to go straight the way down to Hartham Lane. So that’s all finished now, Garratts Meadow, Garratts Mill right across the other side. Where I lived at the bottom there you could co out and get into Garratts Meadow, right across to the river [Beane] and everything. So that hasn’t altered anything there
ES: What side of Port Vale were you on? Going up to Bengeo side, or -----
ESm: Well, if you came across Beane Road
ES: Then you turn right into Port Vale
ESm: We were on the left [Today 87 is on the right]
ES: Oh, they’re pretty houses
ESm: Altered all the doors and windows now, and as you went further down, there was the old malting, McMullens Maltings, men used to be shovelling all the malt and then you came into Russell Street and all down there, Christ Church has now gone, where I married, and then you go along and there was the school, Millmead they call it now.
ES: It looks as though it was a church school [local authority]
ESm: Well on the other side of the road where there’s some houses, just past Sadlers, there used to be a pub there called Sadlers [the Greyhound], the coal people, there used to be a little church place there [Port Vale Chapel – began 1830’s by Reverend Bernard Gilpin, who’d left the Established Church of St Andrew to do so] You went to Sunday afternoons, a little Sunday School – Miss Hicks. [the Misses Hicks also had a private day school at No.7 Port Hill] And we went there, then at Christ Church itself, round the back, Sister Farnsworth, and I went to the Bible Class there. So Sister Farnsworth and Barbara, they lived at the Rectory in Warren Park Road at the time we all went there. Come along and you get to the Two Brewers and next to the Two Brewers was Bridens the bakers. They baked all their bread there, that time when I was there. That WAS bread, cakes WERE cakes and half the price. When my gran had the shop, a little quarter of tea, 4d. Then, as you went down there was Earls the butchers and Spriggs the newsagent, Hoares the green grocers, Cox there that sold haberdashery. Of course, the Baptist has been there as long as I can remember.
ES: What religion were you?
ESm: C of E
ES: Did you go to All Saints or St Andrew?
ESm; No, Christ Church
ES: Yes, yes, of course
ESm; As you go further on, on to Cowbridge, the model cottages and there was Fosters, the fish shop, Mr and Mrs Harry Foster, they had one son, and the Gospel Hall place.
ES: That’s still there, amazing. I wonder who owns that because it’s a biggish plot and a lovely frontage. You would think it would have been developed by now.
ESm: Some man used to have that as a little allotment, grow all the chrysanths and he used to sell them on a Saturday, you could buy bunches of chrysanths. On the other side of the road there was a lady called Miss Bullard and she done all the cane-bottom seats, used to stand and watch her pulling them and twisting them. Then, of course, the old horse forge place
ES: Horse forge, where was that?
ESm: Next door to that then it came -----
ES: Are we round into Old Cross yet?
ESm: Yes, facing what is now McMullens big white building, well opposite there was Miss Bullard, then this man doing all the shoe, used to watch him shoeing all the horses. Well then, of course, come the 2 Miss Pharoahs, the sweets.
ES: I was going to ask you about Pharoahs.
ESm: Oh they were nice 2 people
ES: Was that their name [Yes], a bit exotic!
ESm: There was 2 of the, there, tall ladies, grey hair, but that was a nice high class confectionary. Then come Gunners, the tobacconist and Farnhams and then, on the other side of the road, was the other Briden bakers. That was where you go along and McMullens big place, in that corner bit, that was the bakers.
ES: I know where you mean.
ESm: The people that had that afterwards, when I was a girl was Saggers, Mrs Saggers, and she used to sell all the cakes there. I used to go in on a Saturday and you’d get cream horns, they were only 2d each.
ES: Happy Days! When you say Miss Hucks, were they school teachers?
ESm: Well, only doing the Christianity part. Miss Stocks was a school teacher, everybody was terrified of her. Miss Stocks lived up Port Hill [No.29]. Going up Port Hill, there were people that used to do all the straw hats, and the old man used to mend shoes up there on the bridge
ES: Oh yes. I thought that premises on the bridge was something to do with Bridens.
ESm: Yes, well it was. All their bakers was down there. That’s where they baked all the bread. Then getting through and into town, as I say, Munnings, Post Office, and Barbers was there for years and years and years. Beckwiths, all people like Mr Hall, the dentist, down by the library. When I went to school, they used to have a big room round there to the left of the library, used to have one Tuesday, it was cookery day and a Miss Andrews used to take it and another Tuesday would be laundry, we used to have to take things to wash. Actually, in those days of schooling you were very well educated in domestic ---
ES: In how to be a housewife!
ESm: My grandmother says in that cutting and I will find that, she really believed in people knowing how to go on in life. When I was 9 I could cook very well. I’ve cooked and cleaned and done all my life and she thought that was very fitting for a girl for life to learn to do those things. We did learn, and we had time at school to do dressmaking, used to have to do double hemming over and seams. Now it’s nothing but chasing and running around.
ES: Well, they say that there’s not enough of that, chasing and running around. You were educated for your station in life.
ESm: When I was 16 I could hold the purse strings, save money. When I look now, I’m a good manager, but when I look round today and these people are all stressed out, tearing about to work, they’re no better off hardly at the end of the day, yet in those days I could housekeep and always save and I mean money was small. I’ve seen children go into sweet shops and spend more than we had to keep house on.
ES: I can remember during the war my parents first started saving. They used to buy one 6d savings stamp a week and that’s what our fortune was built on.
ESm: And today, their wages are fantastic, really and the woman as well earning, absolutely.
ES: It’s partly that we were brought up to be frugal – we’d no more use a new piece of string without looking for an old bit, or some make-do and mend approach.
ESm: And I never go along with everyone else, I’m always content with what I’ve got. If I can’t have it, that goes. Because somebody else has got it, everything catches on, it’s like an illness, everybody has to have it. But all the town, as I say, like Ilotts Town Mill was there, Central Meat Co, they were all there
ES: Where was that – Central Meat Co?
ESm: Central Meat Co. Was on the bridge – is it the Woolpack it’s called now?
ES: So when was that, it can’t have been when the bridge was built up.
ESm: No, but that’d been there a long time and Ilotts Town Mill, they lived in the Avenue, the old people, Mr and Mrs Ilott, up here in Lobbs Wood.
ES: I’ve never heard that name before, was that the name of their house?
ESm: It’s still up there and all the wood that went at the side of it, you’ll find there’s 2 more houses built in that wood. I suppose Ilotts sold that woodland and they were built on. And Webbs bungalow ----
ES: This is The Avenue you’re talking about (Yes) . Well they’re all doing that these days aren’t they
ESm: Well, I mean Webbs, the bungalow in The Avenue, yes, I go along there with the little dog, the bungalow up there, that was Webbs, the glove people. I can remember all those kid things laid out, making the gloves. But in the town, as I say, Maidenhead Street, the old Blue Boot Stores and old Mr Grattan and all the shoes in there were half-a-crown, any sort of shoes. They were all along there, Stallabrass was there, International, Pearks, Home and Colonial, I mean Hertford was much much better than it is today, lovely little shops you could go in and be personally served
ES: When we came here, which was 1968, I used to get a lot of stuff from the International, a very good shop, lovely ham.
ESm: Boots the Chemist, the old Boots, that was still there, Warboys on Bull Plain, and Honey Lane, there was a sweet shop up there, Taves, where you got all the musical bits and bobs, in Honey Lane, which had been there for years, hadn’t it, and Howards – Hertford was much better to shop.
ES: Everywhere was!
ESm: Now you get blessed old Tesco, Waitrose. No, I very rarely go down, to be honest with you, because, you see, we’ve got the Co-op here.
ES: That’s a nice place, the Co-op, isn’t it. And at least you feel you’re in control of your own life, you’re not being buffeted round by Tesco.
ESm: What I’ve eaten and cooked ever since as young as I was, but to say eat this, eat that if I [did] I would be ill. All it is doing is their pocket good, not me. I know surely what suits me. I like a good meal every day, I like a good tea. I have me breakfast cereal, toast, I have eggs, I make a casserole chicken ---
ES: Part of it is common sense, isn’t it.
ESm: Yes, but all this now, you mustn’t be eating nothing but vegetables, all of that rot, I don’t know where it comes in.
ES: Well, I suppose people are repelled by the idea of eating meat, my daughter’s a vegetarian so I’ve seen some of it and we’ve got an allotment so we always have lovely vegetables. We’re sort of partly vegetarian.
ESm: But you see, with this animal business, I don’t believe in cruelly treating everything unnecessary as, well I don’t know how long the universe has been about but when it started, animals were about for us to eat, cavemen slaughtered animals. If you didn’t, all these animals would be extinct, there wouldn’t be any bullocks or cows [there is more discussion about the pros and cons of vegetarianism which has not been transcribed]
ES: To go back to what we’re here for, tell me about your knowledge of Mr Kinman.
ESm: Major Kinman and his wife, now he was the Headmaster of the Grammar School in Castle Street, that was the entrance.
ES: In Bayley Hall do you mean?
ESm: No, the Grammar School.
ES: Oh, you mean it went up Wesley Avenue, yes, yes, that’s where the entrance was.
ESm: Now Bayley Hall is still there but where you could walk along here, it’s all the ring road, isn’t it, Gascoyne Way.
ES: I know, you’ve just got to think what was there before.
ESm: Well, the Kinmans, and that’s going back a long while, although she’s not alive now, Miss Evans came from Wales, she was a companion lady to Mrs Kinman and she had [was?] a very well-known horse rider and her own horse and she had a big black Labrador dog. Well, she had this lady from Wales who I got to know and then eventually the war intervened ’39 – ’45 she went back again and then the lady was on her own. They then lived, the Kinmans, in Bayley Hall;
ES: Really?
ESm: Yes, that’s where they lived at the time and in the finish, in her death, she lived at North Road Gardens. Well, Miss Evans then went and I got to know them and this Mrs Kinman, she had a big black Labrador. Well, I’ve always had pets apart from the war years. When I lived with my grandmother they bought me my first Pekinese when I was 10/11 years old and then after that one died and we had no more through the war years I never had another dog until I had a cocker spaniel when my uncle died, and he died in ’56, otherwise ‘til now I’ve always had another dog.
ES: Where had the Kinmans lived before they moved to Bayley Hall?
ESm: I don’t know very much about them at all on that.
ES: Tell me about Mrs Kinman then.
ESm: Mrs Kinman. No, I don’t know much about them until I got to know them [inaudible] and when you went to the big, I don’t know what it is now, is it council?
ES: At the moment it’s not occupied but I believe it’s owned by Rialto, maybe, they’re going to put their offices in there, who knows.
ESm: Well, she had a daughter, one daughter named Phyllis, when you went to Bayley Hall and rang bells there you had the footman all in his livery at the door.
ES: Even for the Kinmans?
ESm: For the Kinmans and you put your messages on a plate, I can remember that. Well, anyway, she had one daughter called Phyllis, she married somebody in a high rank of the army named Lavington, and I went about then with Mrs Kinman and her black Labrador dog
ES: Wasn’t she much older than you?
ESm: Oh yes, she was like an elderly lady and I wasn’t married, oh no.
ES: Are you saying that in some ways you took the place of the companion?
ESm: I suppose I did really, always went about with her. The time I had to spare she used to take me up to see her horses and we went up Queens Road then.
ES: Where did she keep the horse?
ESm: Over at Windy Ridge, Bramfield Road. And she retired over there and we used to walk with the dog and I was just a young girl then.
ES: Were you impressed by the splendour inside the house?
ESm: Yes, but after that he died and there was a great funeral affair there and the horse was destroyed then, at his death, that was his request to be done. Then when you go Hagsdell Lane and of course, during the war years, they came and took up all the railings and I used to go then with Mrs Kinman to her husband’s grave.
ES: Which was in All Saints?
ESm; Yes. As you went down Hagsdell as you look over the fence in there was this huge tall angel and about 3-tier of granite there. We used to take that pumice-stone stuff and I said to her, ‘I’ve done all sorts of cleaning but I’ve never cleaned angels’. She got me all on the go, used to take water up there and doing, I don’t know what today’s price’d be for that. I went about a lot with her at Queens Road and we visited a lot up there, the Sworders, and all the people up there. Well, during the war, the houses were bombed a lot, but I went to a nice lot of, well they really were gentry in those days. Up top were Pearsons. They were really nice people. With Phyllis, she married somebody named Lavington and she went abroad on this big liner and unfortunately Phyllis caught a virus and she died. Now that was her one and only daughter, and then that was it with poor old Mrs Kinman. She came all out of where she was there and she said it was like going into a rabbit hutch.
ES: You mean when she left Bayley Hall.
ESm: Yes, she went up, where it looked over North Station, called North Road Gardens.
ES: Yes, I know it.
ESm: Because the Mayflower Hotel was opposite. That’s where I had the reception of my wedding, the Mayflower Hotel was there.
ES: Was it?
ESm: Now it’s houses isn’t it? (Yes) You come by the Sele Arms it’s called.
ES: Opposite the station – I’m not sure it is the Sele Arms but I know you come along and North Road Gardens is just before.
ESm: Well she moved up there then with her big old dog. Well, Phyllis died, and that of course turned her ----
ES: Knocked the stuffing out of her.
ESm: Absolutely, she never really got over all that. She stayed up there and I know when she used to come to the door she always used to have this long black gown hanging in the hall on a peg, so she said if anyone came to the door they’d think there was a man there. In her sitting room there she had a nice piano, she would play that and on that piano was a frame of Phyllis on it and she had little curtains on it. Well, I kept up with her right up to her death-time really and then of course we’d walk up and she’d seen this horse up there and that was left up there ‘til, I don’t know whether Mrs Kinman died before the actual horse did but ---
ES: Which horse was ordered to be shot then, by Major Kinman? I thought you said one horse was ordered to be shot ---
ESm: Her husband’s. It was hers
ES: I wonder if Bayley Hall belonged to Richard Hale School, because from about 1900 it was used as a boarding school for Richard Hale. Those boys that were boarders used to board with a master there.
ESm: Well it could have been. I don’t know further back but know they came there, a very nice lady, a very short little person and I had my own bicycle and I’d ride up to All Saints there and do quite a bit on that stone. Well in the front of that very big angel, her daughter’s death and the stone is in the front, she’s got so much, 3 tiers of that, and I think it’s like the Bible and a dove on the back and it then says on there his name, also Phyllis Lavington died. I haven’t seen it now for years.
ES: Anyway, I gather it’s not far from the railings.
ESm: But I don’t think the railings are hers because where all that angel was, she got it all done with all little railings all the way round, but, as I say, in war-time they were all carted away, whether rails have been put back there, but it was a beautiful figure, it really was. All these fingers, you had to be so careful how you done them.
ES: Whether cleaning it with pumice-stone was a good idea, you wonder ----
ESm: Absolutely, it used to come up beautiful, lovely and white. What the colour is now I really don’t know. In All Saints churchyard further up, is the vault of Faudel Phillipses and I’ve been all round there.
ES: How did that happen then?
ESm: At that time and wandering through, I might have got my son then, a little boy in the town and we wandered back and through there, not even going to school-time child and the man was there, don’t know if it was old Mr Dolley, sweeping all the leaves and all the steps that went down to it, and he said, ‘Have you looked in there?’. ‘No’ I said, ‘Never been down there’. ‘Oh’ he said, ‘Like to have a look?’ Oh, talk about going into the fridge. We went down these steps and there was all like benches, all benches and all these different generations of the Faudel Phillips and that’s how it was I happened to see in there.
[Transcriber’s Note: Mrs Smith must be mistaken – perhaps she saw a vault of the Townshends. The Faudel Phillips were Jewish and are not mentioned in All Saints Monumental Inscriptions]
Of course, they’ve also got a very big grave up at the Hertford Cemetery, the Bramfield Road end and that’s done with a hedge all round. If you look over, it was all the different Faudel Phillipses you know.
ES: When you say you went visiting with Mrs Kinman, did you go to Brickendonbury then to see Mr Pearson?
ESm: No. Time I went to Pearson’s place and that is going back again when my uncle was a very good dancer and going back in his younger days a nice looking man, a very good dancing man and they had tickets there for something called the Servants’ Ball and so at that time a day, that was me going in to be 18 or more, we went up there to the Pearsons and in the grounds they had these great peacocks about and also they had in the place the ballroom, they had a revolving floor
ES: Really?
ESm: Yes, that was beautiful, yes it was what they called the Servants’ Ball.
ES: Did the band play on that or did the dancers?
ESm: Yes, I went on it. It wasn’t revolving. The revolving floor, you didn’t feel it going but it did move round and then they used to have that for the dancing and then all up here it was done and when the evening finished the lights would all come down like snow. So I do remember that for the Pearsons and all that crowd. Now again, that’s all altered, what is it now?
ES: Well not really. Morgans Walk, the old avenue of lime trees is still there that leads up to Brickendonbury, no, that’s more or less undeveloped, amazingly. But when you were young who were the local gentry?
ESm: Well, there was Ekins.
ES: Yes, these really though are local tradesmen like the Purkiss Ginns, local traders and craftsmen who’d gone up in the world.
ESm: Well, that’s right. With my grandmother and her time then I don’t remember her of course [?] but me grandmother did [sic] and down at the bottom of New Road, Savory’s place, that was a Miss Gosselin, my grandmother was very much in with the Gosselins at Gosselin house or whatever they called that. I don’t know whether this new Gosselin House is something that’s come under the name of that.
ES: Oh well, all Gosselin things are named for that family.
ESm: Well they were there and there’s Dr Williams and Dr Evans and all those and then when it came again over this way and back again to Ware Park, great big house now, well the times I’ve been all over that and that had a revolving ballroom floor
ES: I’ve never heard of such a thing. Who lived there then?
ESm: Who lived there was the Garratts – Town Mill people [Garratts – Sele Mill, Ilotts – Town Mill] well not to do with this one because there was uncles.
ES: Not to do with Simon Garratt then?
ESm: That’s right, all that Garratt, all going back in the generation. My husband, when he was a young lad, lived at Roydon and his parents came to live at Ware Park. They lived in the bungalow and they worked for the Garratt family and I think this one was to do with Lloyds Insurance. Herbert Garratt lived in Ware Park. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, they were always invited down there and knew them very well again, the Garratts. I, of course, married and going over there went to Garratts a lot and that was beautiful – all that lovely open staircase all the way winding ro. Well now, of course, it all belongs to the Carmelites – the nuns. So I don’t think they’re involved in dancing. Outside where they had other big buildings done, the Garratts had, because they used to go shooting with big Labradors, well they had great big kennels built outside. The last time I wandered round there, all these outside, the Carmelites had them for their washing
ES: Really?
ESm: You know all their washing, well they do everything don’t they. They are very nice people.
ES: I thought the nearest convent was Poles Convent at Ware
ESm: No, they’re Carmelites and they’ve been there for a long time and also when wandering round I saw them all abed, …was the sanatorium for TB.
ES: Yes.
ESm: - and they were all in their beds, we used to have to wander right by them.
ES: Are you saying that the Carmelites are still there and were there even when it was a TB Sanitorium?
ESm: No, no, they’ve only been there the latter few years. No, when it was a Sanitorium it was Garratts lived in that big house. And they used to have their head gamekeeper living some place there and head cowman because they had all the dairy herd.
ES: What did your husband’s relatives do there, was he a gardener?
ESm: Yes, a chauffeur, used to chauffer them around taking them off to Felixstowe and he wore what I’d call plum-colour livery and so they lived there then, well for years. My husband lived over there then, and I do, but he always wanted to be a handicraft teacher and passed all his degrees to do it. Unfortunately, war stopped it all so in the finish he got into Wickhams and done all the upholstery.
ES: How did the war affect you? Were you very aware of it?
ESm: Oh I should say so. I remember going by Garratts Mill in North Road, and me son, I suppose he was about 3 when war finished so he was only a little tot, sitting in the pram and I saw a land mine go over and land in Lys Hill. And all the glass came out of the hospital windows – they talk about a bang now, that was a bang and my God you go home and you find all your curtains shattered down and the door off. And the other one, we stood out in my back garden here and I saw the other one go down in Mr Brett’s [Tamworth Road, Wright family’s back garden] opposite Addises.
ES: Not Tamworth Road?
ESm: The haulage people. I saw that one. And also another one, a doodle bug thing came down on Old Cross [Mill Bridge, July 1944] and that was full of glass everywhere. Oh yes and the old wardens coming round, you know, don’t show any light, oh yes we had enough and of course we had all the gas cradle things for babies, gas masks.
ES: You’ve got a son.
ESm: Yes, he don’t live here.
ES: Where does he live?
ESm: He lives over at Willowmead, under the bridges at Hertingfordbury (sic) and when you go through the alley from Farquhar Street you come out onto Port Hill, where that wall goes round, theres a place called Grafton Towers, that was where my son was born, that was a nursing home. And on the other side of the road there was a very big house there that now is the something school.
ES: Oh, the Duncombe.
ESm: Well the nurses had that as well. Well in the latter years that was taken as a hotel
ES: Yes, half of it was.
ESm: Well, that hotel was where the judge came to stay for the Assizes at the Shire Hall
ES: Really? I’ve often wondered where they -------
ESm: I went to one of the Assizes to know what it was like there.
ES: I assumed it would be the Salisbury.
ESm: No, they used to stay up there and then when you went down in the morning you finally arrive and go in. I think there was some trial on from St Albans, even then I was 19 when I went with my husband, so all this, as you say, going on at that time, 18, I could have been, perhaps I was going with him at 19, I used to watch these on the telly of all these barristers and all that walking up and down and they get people in such a tiz waz, I wonder if it does go ---- and I went to one of these in there, sure enough they bang bang, uprise! Then this judge would sit there writing and these barristers and sure enough they walk and ----- but once you got in there you couldn’t come out until it’s finished. But I went in there just to see what actually went on in a trial
ES: You’ve lived around here all your life, have you had anything to do with the Melvilles at the Grove – in Port Vale just the town side of Christ Church there’s a lodge.
ESm: Mary Chapman lived there and [inaudible] used to do her shoes, who was it the top of there.
ES: Melville, I just wondered if you’d had a lot to do with them
ESm: No, I’ve heard of them but not anything to do with them. I remember Mary when she lived down there with her parents, old Mr and Mrs Chapman.
ES: There’s another house, Whitacre, and there’s a gate opposite Warren Park Road.
ESm: I know where you mean, White Acre.
ES: It’s actually pronounced Whitacre.
ESm: Is it? Well I never. I do remember when like Nelson Street, you do know Nelson Street don’t you, bottom of Port Vale you go up Nelson Street.
ES: Yes, I must have been up it today.
ESm: Up to Nelson Street of course the water won’t go, but I remember from the North Station right the way up to the rise of the hill was flooded. Keith Shepherd used to row them across with their briefcases in a boat to the train.
ES: What year was that do you think.
ESm: Before the war. They’ve pipe-lined it because that field next to Beane Road was absolutely deep in water. And they used to wear bowler hats in them days and their briefcases and he’d paddle ‘em back again. And as I said, not many people in those days but I can remember that as a girl and he was very pleasant but I don’t think many can say that really, I had lots of chats with the hangman.
ES: Who was that?
ESm: Now his mother, the name was Baxter, and he was the hangman, used to go up to Pentonville, and I can see that man now, he was a fairly tallish man, he used to wear a longish biscuity-coloured raincoat and a bowler hat and a briefcase, a very pleasant man.
ES: Where did he live?
ESm: In Wellington Street with his mother and it was those houses you went to the top of Nelson Street and turn left there that was Wellington Street on the right-hand side houses went up steps and his mother lived in one of them
ES: Funnily enough I had heard that but I had heard it was something to do with Baxters the butchers.
ESm: There used to be one in Railway Street didn’t there?
ES: Well, maybe, but I’m thinking of the one almost opposite the Castle Hall/
ESm: That’s right but it was nothing to do, no relation or ---- and Barbara Cartland, she’s spoken to me.
ES: Oh, where did you meet her?
ESm: It was only because of the animals, corresponded as regards the animals and I read a very nice article she wrote in the Express and I wrote and said how much I enjoyed it and that’s how it came about, and also again, very charming people. He was a bone specialist in St Marys, Paddington and his wife was Barbara Woodhouse. And I stayed with Barbara Woodhouse at Campions Croxley Green for a week with them and Juno, the Great Dane.
Again, I’d got all her books and I wrote to her and had my little cocker spaniel and I know she said she got people coming there, boarders, and doing the dog would I like to come with her and bring the little dog as a guest. And I kept in touch with her and visited her when my husband was also alive at the end of the time then and I only went then and I thought I’m going to take the opportunity to go and I stayed and took the dog and I know my mother-in-law came up and took over and looked after things here and my son and I had a week and it was marvellous, she had 5 bathrooms like the Castle grounds the house is.
ES: What was she? I know she had programmes on television, was she a vet or animal trainer
ESm: Animal trainer, she trained thousands of dogs. I’ve got all her books and the last time I saw her was at Crufts and I think she had a stand in there collecting for guide dogs for the blind. And I kept in touch with her until she had a very bad stroke. But I’ve never heard of the death of her husband.
ES: So, one way or another, you’ve seen the high life.
ESm: Oh I have, all sorts. But now I’m very content.
Recording Ends
Businesses in Port Vale 1920s
2 Miss Smith, Dressmaker 58 J Poore, Gardener
6 S Parcell, Port Vale Dairy 70 J Pitcher, Bootmaker
30 Butler, Two Brewers 87 Mary Capel, Shopkeeper
4 [George Street] Briden’s, Bakers
24 [Port Vale] Arthur Wells, Bootmaker
50 G Sadler, Greyhound